SSL & HTTPS
Free SSL on every plan, and an upgrade only if you need one
Every site we host gets a certificate that costs nothing and renews itself. Wildcard and EV certificates sit on the shelf for the day you need subdomain cover or a verified company name.
$0
What the standard certificate costs
Auto
Issued and renewed for you
256-bit
Strength of the encryption
$1.5M
Warranty behind an EV certificate
Why It Matters
Encryption, trust and the padlock, all covered
A certificate is not a box to tick — it protects what your visitors type and tells them the site is safe to use.
The padlock people look for
Serve a site over HTTPS and browsers draw the padlock in the address bar. Skip it and visitors read 'Not secure' instead.
Traffic scrambled on the way through
Logins, form entries and payments are encoded as they travel between the visitor's browser and our servers, so anyone listening in reads nothing useful.
Renewal you never think about
Well before the expiry date, the certificate quietly reissues itself. No lapsed padlock, no checkout throwing errors on a Saturday morning.
A nudge in the rankings
Search engines favour encrypted pages, so an HTTPS site can sit above an otherwise identical one that never bothered with a certificate.
Proof of who you are
An EV certificate puts your company through a vetting process and writes the verified name into the certificate itself — worth having when people are typing in card numbers.
Fitted before you ask
As soon as your domain's DNS points at us, the free certificate installs itself. Nothing to buy, nothing to configure.
Free On Every Plan
The standard certificate, with no catch
A certificate at no charge comes with every plan we sell — shared, WordPress, reseller, VPS and dedicated alike. It installs itself, stretches across your domain and its subdomains, and renews without a word from you, so the padlock simply stays where it is.
- Covers your domain and its subdomains
- Issued as soon as the DNS points here
- Reissued ahead of every expiry
- No cheap first year that jumps later
Upgrades
When wildcard or EV is worth the money
When the free certificate genuinely is not enough, a paid one takes over. A wildcard secures every subdomain under a single certificate; an EV certificate writes your verified company name into the certificate details — worth having for shops, membership sites and anywhere sensitive information changes hands.
- Domain-validated (DV) options
- Wildcard cover across every subdomain
- Extended Validation for the strongest signal
- Warranty cover up to $1.5 million
Buying One
Most sites should not buy a certificate
The free certificate on your plan uses the same strong encryption a paid one does, and it renews itself. There are two reasons to pay, and only two.
Every plan already carries a free certificate that renews itself, shows visitors the padlock and runs modern TLS. For an ordinary site or shop that is the whole requirement, and we would sooner tell you so than take money for something that changes nothing.
Two jobs a free certificate cannot do. It cannot cover unlimited subdomains under a single certificate — that is Wildcard. And it cannot carry your verified company identity with a warranty behind it — that is Extended Validation, which earns its keep mainly if you take payments or logins and want the strongest trust signal going.
After a warranty-backed single-domain certificate without the wildcard cover? We can still issue one on request — just ask, and we'll give you an honest read on whether it will do anything for you.
Wildcard SSL Certificate
One certificate, your domain and every subdomain beneath it
$169.99/yr
the renewal price is the same · covers every subdomain
- Validation
- Domain (DV)
- Issued
- Usually same day
- Warranty
- $10,000
- Secures
- *.yourdomain
- One certificate does the job for every subdomain
- Coverage written as *.yourdomain
- HTTPS and the padlock on all of them at once
- A $10,000 relying-party warranty stands behind it
- A sensible buy for apps that spin up subdomains
- Our team fits it for you at no extra charge
The till is on Hosting Cheap, the billing platform we run orders through.
EV SSL Certificate
Your company checked, named and vouched for in the certificate
$379.99/yr
the renewal price is the same · highest assurance
- Validation
- Extended (EV)
- Issued
- 1–3 days
- Warranty
- $1,500,000
- Secures
- 1 domain
- Extended Validation proves the company behind the site exists
- The certificate carries your checked company name
- No stronger signal of trust is available to buy
- A $1,500,000 relying-party warranty stands behind it
- Reassures people at the checkout and the login box
- Our team steers you through each validation step
The till is on Hosting Cheap, the billing platform we run orders through.
After checkout our team handles validation and installation for you — usually inside a day for Wildcard and a few days for EV, since EV means verifying the company behind the site.
How It Works
Secure from the first day, with nothing to set up
- 1
Point the domain at us
Add the domain to your account and aim its DNS at our servers. That is the only part you do by hand.
- 2
We issue it for you
Once the domain checks out we request and install the free certificate — no button to press, no files to edit.
- 3
It looks after itself from there
The certificate reissues ahead of every expiry, so HTTPS and the padlock stay put without you watching a calendar.
In The Box
What comes with your certificate
- A free certificate on every plan
- Issued and installed without you lifting a finger
- Your domain and its subdomains covered
- Renewal handled automatically
- Force-HTTPS redirects if you want them
- Current TLS 1.3 encryption
- Upgrades available: DV, wildcard and EV
- Trusted by every mainstream browser
- Certificate prices with nothing tacked on
- People on support at any hour
Questions
SSL certificates, explained
Is SSL really included on every plan?
It is. Every hosting plan carries a certificate at no charge, issued for you and kept current for as long as the site stays with us.
What does a paid certificate do that the free one does not?
The free one encrypts your traffic and gives you the padlock, and for most sites that is the entire job. Paid certificates add two things: a wildcard covers every subdomain under one certificate, and an EV certificate carries a vetted check of your company identity — a signal both browsers and shoppers read as stronger.
Will visitors see the padlock?
Once the certificate is live, browsers show the padlock and serve your pages over HTTPS. A site without a valid certificate gets a 'Not secure' warning in the address bar instead.
Do I have to renew it myself?
No. Free certificates reissue before they expire without any prompting from you. For paid wildcard and EV certificates we send a reminder ahead of the validation window, so cover never runs out.
Does HTTPS slow a site down?
Not to any degree you would notice. Modern TLS is heavily optimised, and HTTPS is a requirement for HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 — protocols that generally make sites quicker rather than slower.
Can one certificate cover all my subdomains?
The free certificate already covers your main domain and its subdomains. If you are running a great many of them, a wildcard certificate handles the lot under a single certificate.
Give visitors a reason to trust the page.
Every plan carries a free certificate that renews itself, with wildcard and EV cover waiting for the day you need to prove who you are.
See Hosting PlansBrowsers stopped being polite about missing encryption years ago. Every domain here gets a certificate at no cost, fitted and renewed without a reminder in anyone's calendar. Behind the counter: NVMe storage, LiteSpeed caching, redundant tier-3 halls and engineers who are awake at three in the morning.
Stocked for owners locking down what visitors send them: free SSL on every domain, a free transfer from your old host, automatic daily backups, and no surprises between the price tag and the invoice.
Free certificates, and paid ones when you need them
The free certificate covers the domain and its subdomains, installs itself and renews on schedule. Paid certificates are on the shelf for projects that want a wildcard across many subdomains, a longer warranty or an organisation-validated seal — issued quickly, and installed by us if you would rather not.
Underneath, every certificate gets identical treatment — NVMe drives instead of spinning disks, LiteSpeed instead of a plain web server, and a 99.9% uptime figure written into the terms.
When paying for a certificate makes sense
Billing ought to be boring: one figure, stated up front, repeated at renewal, with promotions marked plainly instead of buried in a footnote. Licences and issued certificates go live immediately, so refunds there are looked at case by case, while any hosting bought alongside keeps its full 30-day money-back guarantee.
Basic encryption is never an upsell here; it is fitted to every domain on every plan. Paid certificates are priced on the page with what they add spelled out, so you can judge whether you actually need one.
How certificates are issued and renewed
Issue and renewal are automated on the platform, with the certificate installed and the site moved to HTTPS without downtime. Renewals run well before expiry, and a failed one raises an alert with our engineers rather than only with you.
The unglamorous work — patching, monitoring, hardware replacement, filtering — is in the price and done by us. That is most of what you are actually buying.
- Free certificate on every domain, auto-renewed
- Wildcard and OV certificates when a project needs one
- Watched minute by minute from our network desk
- Conditioned power and more than one network path
Worth Knowing
More of what comes with it
No expiry-day surprises
Renewal runs early and alerts our engineers if it fails. Nobody should learn about it from a browser warning.
Someone at the counter
The queue is staffed by engineers around the clock, and answers usually arrive within 15 minutes.
Same price next year
Plans renew at the figure you joined on, with no second price waiting in year two.
99.9% uptime, in writing
Redundant tier-3 halls, automatic failover and monitoring that pages an engineer before you notice.
A panel that makes sense
The controls are where you would expect them, which is most of what a good panel has to do.
Move up without moving out
Outgrowing a tier is a click in the panel, not a migration and a weekend.
Starting Out
Three steps and you're set up
- 1
Compare the tiers
Point the domain at your account.
- 2
Connect the domain
The free certificate is issued and installed for you.
- 3
Publish
Need a wildcard or an OV seal instead? Order it and we fit that one.
On the Shelf
Also included, no extra charge
- Hosting bought alongside keeps its 30-day guarantee
- HTTPS fitted without a manual install
- Renewals handled automatically, before expiry
- Built for owners locking down what visitors send them
- Free SSL on every domain you host
- Migration done by our engineers, no charge
- Automatic daily backups on every plan
- 99.9% uptime written into the SLA
Still Asking
A few more we hear often
Is the free certificate as secure as a paid one?
The encryption is identical — same strength, same browser trust. Paid certificates add organisation validation, wildcard coverage across subdomains and a warranty, which some businesses need for legal or procurement reasons. For most sites the free one is the right answer and we will tell you so.
How quickly can I get started with SSL certificates?
Straight away. Orders provision themselves, and if you would rather we set things up, the desk is staffed at whatever hour you happen to be reading this.
Will the price change at renewal?
The same tag, the same amount. We do not run an introductory price that quietly doubles once you have settled in.
What if I change my mind about SSL certificates?
Licences and issued certificates activate on the spot, so refunds there are settled case by case — write to the desk within 7 days and we will work something out. Hosting bought at the same time keeps its full 30-day money-back guarantee regardless.